Alas! In sliding down hill his knapsack had been torn into ribbons, so that the carefully prepared sandwiches were strewn along the hillside.
His thoughts were “turned into a different channel;” but he was not very much “amused.”
In this way, the time passed with Henry. He could not, or would not, make an effort to move from the heap of earth which had arrested his downward course.
Having thus disposed of him, how did it fare with Will?
When the demon re-entered the cave, he, according to his custom, fastened the door. Next he kindled a good fire on the smouldering coals of the old one; and then, having stepped up to the room where Will was a prisoner, he unlocked and opened the door and told him to come out. Will did so with alacrity.
The demon said no more, but pointed out a seat, and quietly prepared to get supper. He took a fat bird out of his pouch, and roasted it carefully over the fire. Then he fixed part of a chicken, a delicious fish, and sundry other eatables, each on a separate stick, where the fire would cook them. To Will’s astonishment, he suddenly appeared with a few slices of bread, which he put on a toaster and toasted while the other things were being cooked. Now, who ever read about a hermit that toasted bread?
By the way, the demon, like the writer in inditing these few chapters, had several “irons in the fire” at once.
When everything was ready, he set a table with the food thus prepared, and took a pan of skim-milk from a crazy cupboard built in the wall.
“Sit down and eat,” he said to Will; “I’ll speak with you afterwards.”
Will was in no humor to care about eating, and as it was yet early in the evening he was not hungry; but not liking to refuse the strange man’s hospitality, he sat down to the table and “ate like an emigrant,” as Henry would have phrased it. He afterwards told his friends that the “victuals were very good.”